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Executive Edition is a must have

Before Shop-Eat-Surf, there were two sites I paid for premium content on. One is Surfline, the other is the Wall Street Journal. One is about all things surf, the other, the best business content site in the world. Shop-eat-surf is the intersection of those two worlds. Shop-Eat-Surf provides everything from coverage of events, people, brands and trends. However, beyond the Executive Edition "wall" is more meaty analysis and interpretation of financial statements, business models and brand philosophies; why certain brands and companies are succeeding, where others aren't. The Executive Edition is a must have read if the business of surf and action sports are on your radar screen.

- By Jeff Berg, Co-owner, Surfline

Great insight into the issues

I am a big fan of Tiffany and her team as well as an avid reader of Shop-Eat-Surf. I shop, I eat, I surf -- I should pay.

Joel Patterson on Surfer's 50th, the Web, and what's next

By Shelby StangerNovember 12, 2009 5:00 AM

With Surfer Magazine about to celebrate its 50th Anniversary, we thought it was time to check in with the current Editor-in-Chief Joel Patterson.

We wanted to know a little about how Surfer has got to where it is now, how it is dealing with changing technology, and what it has coming up for its 50th Anniversary as well as the future of the magazine.

Tell me a little about the history of SURFER magazine and how it came to be?

SURFER was started by a surf filmmaker named John Severson as a supplement to his film “Surf Fever.”

The first issue was produced in January 1960 a couple weeks after John F. Kennedy threw his hat in the ring for the Democratic nomination for the 1960 Presidential Election. Severson was also a writer, a painter, a thinker, a politician of sorts, and an unorthodox entrepreneur.

He printed 5,000 copies of the first issue (which was initially called “The Surfer,” but he removed the “The” a couple issues later) and sold them for 75 cents a piece.

They sold like hotcakes, and he quickly realized he had stumbled on something surfers loved. Orange County kids like 12-year-old Herbie Fletcher rode their bikes to screenings of “Surf Fever” just to get a copy, and as Herbie put it, “It changed my life forever. I thought, ‘(Screw) everything else. This is what I want to do.’ ”

Within a few years of the launch, half a dozen surf mags had sprung up Australia and the U.S.

In 1971 Severson called it quits, sold SURFER to For Better Living, and moved to Maui where he’s created art, surfed, and grown fruit ever since.